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Columbia River going barbless

VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) - Washington officials have had an itch for years to shift to barbless hooks for salmon and steelhead sport fishing in the Columbia River.

It's been proposed _ then postponed because Oregon was not on board _ before.

Well, it became reality on Jan. 1

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced late last month that barbless hooks will be required when fishing for salmon, steelhead and cutthroat trout from the mouth of the Columbia upstream to the state boundary with Oregon, 17 miles east of McNary Dam.

Sportsmen still may use double-point or treble hooks, so long as the barbs have been filed off or pinched down.

Oregon's Fish and Wildlife Commission in early December approved a measure prohibiting Oregon license holders from using barbed hooks in the Columbia and the Willamette River downstream of Willamette Falls, including Multnomah Channel.

Washington and Oregon have talked a lot about requiring sportsmen to use barbless hooks in the Columbia as part of the revamping of Columbia River harvest rules starting in 2013.

It's all part of transitioning the gillnetters to off-channel areas, requiring use of seines for commercial harvest in the main Columbia and making sport fishing the priority by 2017.

Washington's commission is expected to bless the ban on barbed hooks when it decides on the Columbia River fisheries harvest reforms Jan. 12 in Olympia.

Oregon's action required Washington to follow suit by Jan. 1 in order to have concurrent rules in the Columbia.

"Fisheries can be very difficult to manage under two different sets of rules," said Guy Norman, regional director for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "The two states have worked together for nearly a hundred years to maintain regulatory consistency."

The Washington and Oregon commissions heard more than a dozen hours of testimony last month about the Columbia fisheries reform. Interspersed among the comments about gillnets, purse seines and off-channel areas were frequent opinions about barbless hooks.

Jim Myron of the Native Fish Society told the Oregon commission the barbless hook rule would be the biggest conservation move in the entire Columbia fisheries revamping.